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To keep you up-to-date with the latest releases for Anthology Illuminate: 

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  2. Keep track of what we've released in the past in Archived Release Notes


Release Notes

Illuminate October 2024 Release

Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 23 October 2024
Illuminate, Updated Features

Our October 2024 release includes:

Data Q&A available in Canada & Sydney 

In addition to being available in the EU and US, Data Q&A is now available for clients hosted in the Canada and Sydney regions. We’re adding support for more regions in the future. Using Data Q&A, viewers can ask questions based on available topics and receive an answer in the form of a dashboard. The dashboard has multiple visualizations, as well as a text-based summary generated by AI. 

Data Q&A is not currently available to viewers with restricted access to data. Only institutions that have adopted Institutional Authentication and opted in to Data Q&A in Settings can use Data Q&A.

Find out more about Data Q&A

New Global Settings 

The Global Settings page now includes a control for session timeout. Clients can select a timeout between 15 minutes and 8 hours. It also includes an institutional email field. We recommend that clients populate this email with the most appropriate address to receive notifications of system outages, planned maintenance windows, and other important information.

Find out more about Global Settings

Native authentication password rotation 

Although we encourage all clients to use Institutional Authentication for greater security and to unlock additional features, Illuminate native authentication is still supported. Native authentication refers to signing in with an individual Illuminate account. In order to improve security for this method, we are enforcing password rotation every 90 days. Users may update their password at any point by following the “Forgot password” link on the login page.


Illuminate July 2024 Release

Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 24 July 2024
Reporting, Updated Features

Our July 2024 release includes:

AI Design Assistant Adoption Report 

Previously available only to clients opting into the Illuminate Preview program, this report is now generally available to all clients. It reports on usage of the AI Design Assistant in Blackboard Ultra over time, by institutional hierarchy node, course, and instructor. 

Find out more about the AI Design Assistant Adoption Report

Data Q&A 

Previously only available as part of the Illuminate Enhanced Reporting upgrade, Data Q&A is now available as a feature of Illuminate. Data Q&A is included at no additional cost for clients hosted in the US and EU regions, with further regional support to follow. Using Data Q&A, you can ask a question based on available topics and receive an answer in the form of a dashboard with multiple visualizations, as well as a text-based summary generated by AI from the visualizations. 

Data Q&A is not currently available to Viewers with restricted access to data, which will follow in an update to the topic, and is only available to institutions that have adopted Institutional Authentication.

Find out more about Data Q&A

Improvements to reports:

  • Student Performance and Grade – This report has been updated to improve visual and filtering consistency. 
  • Learning Platform Adoption – The 4-level Institutional Hierarchy filters have been added to all tabs except the Originality Tool Adoption tab. 
  • Collaboration Session Activity Report – This report now supports role-based access. 
  • Learning Tools Adoption Report – This report now supports role-based access. 
  • LMS Trends Report – This report, which is available to advisors within Anthology Reach, now has printing enabled.

Data model improvements: 

  • A new canonical sub-model has been deployed for CRM use cases, based on data available in Anthology Reach. 

This sub-model is not yet populated and is deployed in order to generate feedback and prioritization of future expansion. We are working towards data ingestion for Reach clients and will share progress in a future release.


Illuminate April 2024 Release

Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 30 April 2024
Reporting, Updated Features

Our April 2024 release includes:

  • Improvements to our Home Page for a consistent and better user experience.

    Role-Based Access is now available for clients using Institutional Authentication with SAML as their identity provider. This feature allows access to compartmentalized reports, enabling administrators to give users the permissions to log into reporting and access data only from the nodes they are associated with.
    Now, administrators can assign roles and permissions to allow or restrict user access to specific reporting areas.

    Find out more about Role-Based Access and Roles and Permissions

    In Custom Reports, a feature of the Illuminate Enhanced Reporting premium upgrade, Authors can now easily create visualizations through simple drag-and-drop actions, selecting metrics from pre-built datasets already connected in their instances. This eliminates the requirement for SQL skills. 
    Pre-built datasets included are:

    • Person Course Summary
    • Learning Filters All Roles
    • RLS Filters

    Additionally, Authors can now choose to cache data and refresh it based on their preferred schedule. They can also upload flat files like CSVs or Excel spreadsheets, enabling seamless incorporation of external data into Enhanced Reporting.

  • Other improvements and bug fixes:
    In Learning:

    • In the Social and Collaborative Engagement Report we solved an issue with the Institutional Hierarchy Levels and the Tool type filters. In the Virtual Engagement tab, we also fixed an issue with the x-axis of the stacked bar for the student distribution by participation in Collaborate sessions. Those values are now correctly sorted.
    • The Student Summary Report now supports Role Based Access.

    In Leading:


Illuminate March 2024 Release

Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 26 March 2024
Reporting, Updated Features

Our March 2024 release includes:

  • One new report in the Leading area:

    To provide a better understanding of how tools are being used and adopted in the Institution, we have improved the Learning Tools Activity and Use report.  

    The Learning Tools Adoption Report now includes key information on tools usage, identifies which courses and Institutional Hierarchy Nodes use specific tools, and allows for easy comparisons of tools usage across different timeframes.

    The report has two tabs:

    • Overview
    • Comparison

    Find out more about the Learning Tools Adoption Report.

  • For institutions with Anthology Student, new SIS filters and attributes were incorporated into the Student Performance and Grades and the Social and Collaborative Engagement reports:

    • Course Modality 
    • Grade Level 
    • Program 
    • Course Retake 
    • Primary Instructor 

    A distinct indicator (🔹) identifies data sourced from the Student Information System (SIS) allowing institutions without SIS data to recognize why certain elements are not populated. The overall functionality of the report remains unchanged.


Illuminate February 2024 Release

Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 21 February 2024
Reporting, Updated Features

Our February 2024 release includes:

  • Illuminate has a new URL: https://illuminate.blackboard.com/. Users can still access Illuminate using the previous URL.
  • In Settings, under the Snowflake Account Settings tab, a credit burndown chart is now available for better control of the institution's monthly credit usage.

    A credit burndown chart is now available in the Snowflake Account Settings tab
  • Other improvements and bug fixes:
    • In Learning, in the Student Summary Report: We fixed an issue with the Course ID value. It now appears in the Course summary Report for consistency between reports. Additionally, in the Activity Log Tab, we are now filtering out “Root” and “Interactive” elements from the item column.
    • In Teaching, in the Instructional Practice Report: We resolved an issue with the filter controls of the Virtual Classroom Engagement Tab and updated the Collaborate Session calculations for consistency within the report.
    • In Leading, in the Course Administration Report: We addressed an issue related to the percentage of new updated items. Previously, it filtered out any items created before the course creation date, resulting in always showing a 100% percentage and an artificially low item count. This issue was solved by modifying the logic behind the course item count to consider items created or modified after the course creation time, thus removing the template items.
    • In Leading, in the Learning Platform Adoption Report: The LMS Activity Tab now includes 4 levels of Institutional Hierarchy, allowing Institutions to set their own context and zoom in on the data they need.
  • In Custom Reports, Authors can enjoy a better user experience with an improved frame and expand/collapse actions.

Illuminate Reporting January 2024 Release

Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 24 January 2024
New Features, Updated Features

Our January 2024 release includes:

  • In Teaching, the Course Summary Report is now supported for Role Based Access for clients with Institutional Authentication using Blackboard Learn as the identity provider.
  • In Custom Reports, Authors can now seamlessly share dashboards with report viewers within their institution. 

    More about Role Based Access


Illuminate Reporting December 2023 Release

Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 13 December 2023
Updated Features

Our December 2023 release includes:

  • For institutions with Anthology Student, new SIS filters and attributes were incorporated into the Student Engagement report:

    • Course Modality
    • Grade Level
    • Program
    • Course Retake
    • Primary Instructor

    A distinct indicator  (🔹) identifies data sourced from the Student Information System (SIS) allowing institutions without SIS data to recognize why certain elements are not populated. The overall functionality of the report remains unchanged. 

  • In the Teaching reporting area, the Instructional Practices and the Assessment and Grading reports are now supported for Role-Based Access for institutions with Institutional Authentication using Blackboard Learn as the identity provider. 

    More about Role-Based Access


Illuminate Reporting November 2023 Release

Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 15 November 2023
Updated Features

Our November 2023 release includes:

  • A new color palette was added to our reports to have a more accessible experience.
     
    New color palette for reporting
  • New landings offer detailed information and insights into what is encompassed in the upgrade to Illuminate Enhanced Reporting.
    Enhanced features empty states inviting to know Illuminate Enhanced

 


Blackboard Data Access Control

Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 24 October 2023

In our October 2023 release:

  • In settings, Institutional administrators now have a Credits Usage card with the number of credits used and the remaining for the month in their Snowflake Reader account, for better management.
    Snowflake Credits Usage

    More about Credits Usage and Settings

  • We are implementing a new process to optimize Illuminate Reporting, called Sleep Mode, which will help us ensure the efficient use of resources while making sure you have continued access to reporting. Reporting Instances that have not been used for a period of 30 days will be temporarily placed in a dormant state, you will be prompted to awaken the system when you next login.

    Sleep mode will not be activated for clients of Enhanced Reporting.


Blackboard Data Reporting July 2023 Release

Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 25 July 2023

The July 2023 release of Blackboard Data Reporting includes one new report in Preview release:

Our upcoming Learning Tools Adoption report provides a better understanding of how tools are being used and adopted in the Institution, giving insight into the usage of tools by different user types, courses, and Hierarchy Nodes, as well as allowing easy comparisons of tool adoption within a specific timeframe.   

The report is available for use and can be accessed directly from Blackboard Data Reporting. Please keep in mind that this report is an improvement of the Learning Tools Adoption and Use report, which will still be available in the Leading area.  

We are offering early access to this report to those institutions who opt-in to our Preview Release program. The current version of the report includes the Overview tab and the Comparison tab, with a link to a feedback survey directly in the report. To find out more about the Preview Release program and to opt-in, use the link: Preview Release Opt-in.


Blackboard Data Reporting May 2023 Release

Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 24 May 2023

The May 2023 release of Blackboard Data Reporting includes one new report in Preview release and the following improvements:

Our upcoming Student Summary report provides insight into a single student’s activity, engagement and performance across all their current and historical courses and allows to see in a given time scale what the student has done in courses. We’d like to offer early access to this report to those institutions who opt-in to our “Preview” release. The current version of the report includes the Overview tab and the Engagement and Performance tab, along with direct links to feedback. To find out more about the Preview Release program, and to opt-in, use the link: Preview Release Opt-In

Other improvements & bug fixes:

  • In Learning and Teaching reports fixed an issue with filtering when selecting the course start date.
  • In Leading we fixed an issue with filtering in the Course Administration Report, and now all non-deleted courses are included in the report.

Blackboard Data Reporting March 2023 Release

Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 08 March 2023

The March 2023 release of Blackboard Data Reporting includes one new report in Preview release and the following improvements:

Our upcoming Course Summary report provides insight into student engagement and performance, course design, and instructional practice for a single course, and allows filtering of activity between a set of dates. We’re offering early access to this report to those institutions who opt-in to our “Preview” release program. The current version of the report includes the Student Engagement and Performance tab and an Overview tab, with links to feedback surveys directly in the report. To find out more about the Preview Release program, and to opt-in, use the link: Preview Release Opt-In

Other improvements & bug fixes:

  • In Learning, the “Social and Collaborative Report” now includes all Collaborate sessions with roles other than student or guest present (Facilitator, Teaching assistant, Grader), whereas it previously only considered sessions with an Instructor role present.
  • In all reports, “child” courses are now filtered out to avoid false negatives for student activity and instructor presence.

Blackboard Data Reporting November 2022 Release

Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 22 November 2022

The November 2022 release of Blackboard Data Reporting includes the following improvements:

In Learning, the Engagement with Assessment tab in the Student Engagement report has been updated with the following enhancements:

  • A donut chart is included showing the proportion of submissions that were on time, late, overdue or upcoming for better visualization.
  • A new stacked bar chart is included to compare submission status by Institutional Hierarchy Node.
  • New table that shows student engagement with assessment in each of the children of the Institutional Hierarchy Node.
  • An additional table is included that shows the level of student engagement with assessment in each Course.
  • New table that shows the level of engagement of each student.
  • Filter to include or exclude enrollments that are not “available” in courses or with no activity after a given number of days.
  • New filter to choose between all assessments or only those contributing to the Total grade.
Blackboard data reporting showing the Student engagement with assessment report

Additionally, Blackboard Data Reporting is now localized to four additional languages: Italian, Polish, Traditional Chinese and German.


Blackboard Data Reporting September 2022 Release

Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 21 September 2022

The September 2022 release of Blackboard Data Reporting includes the following improvements:

  • A new Course ID filter has been added to all report tabs in Learning and Teaching, as well as to the Course Administration report in Leading. This filter allows you to search for and select a range of courses, supports wild card searching (*) and should be of particular value to institutions that do not currently use Institutional Hierarchy.
  • Accessibility improvement in Data Tables to every non-tabular visualization. There is now an option in the contextual menu to “View Summary Data”, which displays the data points used in the visualization as a table. 
  • In Teaching, the “Class Size” and “Course Design and Organization” tabs in “Instructional Practices” have been improved with our common report anatomy.

Updated reports leverage the common report anatomy that includes, for each use case, a high-level overview, distribution, institutional hierarchy node comparison, course listing and student listing - in the Learning reporting area - with actionable metrics.


Blackboard Data Reporting July 2022 Release

Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 05 July 2022
Reporting, Updated Features

The July 2022 release of Blackboard Data Reporting includes improvements in the Learning and Teaching reporting areas: 

In Learning:

  • The Engagement with Course Content tab in the Student Engagement report has been improved with our common report anatomy.
  • The Engagement with Peers and Instructors tab in the Student Engagement report has been removed and replaced with a new report called Social and Collaborative Engagement. This report contains two new tabs:
    • Learning Tools Engagement.
    • Virtual Classroom Engagement

In Teaching

  • The Course Access tab in the Instructional Practices report has been improved with our common report anatomy.
  • The Instruction and Facilitation tab has been split into two tabs, in the same report, that mirror the reports in the Engagement with Peers and Instructors report in Learning from an instructor engagement perspective.
    • Learning Tools Engagement.
    • Virtual Classroom Engagement.

All new and updated reports leverage the common report anatomy that includes, for each use case, a high-level overview, distribution, institutional hierarchy node comparison, course listing, and in the Learning reporting area the student listing.

 

 


Blackboard Data Reporting June 2022 Release

Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 15 June 2022
Reporting, Updated Features

The June 2022 release of Blackboard Data Reporting includes the following minor improvements to reports:

  • Applied a more accessible color palette to visualizations, which provides greater contrast between chart segments. 

  • A bugfix in the Course Administration report to remove deleted courses from the dataset. 

  • A bugfix to enable clients outside the US-East region to authenticate using Blackboard Login Sign in with your institutional account. Note that only institutions that have adopted Blackboard Login will be able to use this method. 


Blackboard Data Reporting May 2022 Release

Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 10 May 2022
Reporting, Updated Features, New Features 

The May 2022 release of Blackboard Data Reporting includes improvements to two reports in the Learning reporting area.

Enrollment-level detail added to:

Each of these reports now includes a table containing one row per student course enrollment, and appropriate metrics for the context of the report. This will therefore list all students on all courses within the filters you’ve selected.

The student listing includes features developed directly from feedback gathered in our Blackboard Data Insiders user group:

  • First and Last Name separation for easier sorting. 
  • A “mailto” link that will address an email to the chosen student in your default email application with one click. 
  • A comparative indicator on the “Course Access” column that indicates whether the student’s course accesses are below, within, or above the typical range for the course: 
    • 1 bar – Low – in the lowest quartile. 
      Three bar graph, one filled bar.
    • 2 bars – Normal – within the interquartile range (middle two quartiles). 
      Three bar graph, two bars filled.
    • 3 bars – High – in the top quartile. 
      Three bar graph, three bars filled.

Enhanced course listing:

The course listing has been enhanced and now includes all appropriate courses within your filter selection, where previously it included only the top/bottom 10 courses. 

Visual filtering:

To make it easier to find actionable information, these reports also use visual filtering, where your selection within a visualization will further filter the student table.  

Examples:

  • In Course Access, you can select the “Inactive” segment of the donut chart, and the student table will only list inactive enrollments.  
  • You can also select a course in the course listing and its enrollments will be displayed in the student table. 

Visual filtering walkthrough video

Visual filtering is additive, so if you select both prior examples, the student table will list inactive enrollments in your chosen course only. You can reset visual filtering by selecting the funnel icon in the contextual menu of the visualization and either selecting the “X” to remove an individual filter or “Clear” to remove all visual filtering. Visual filtering is also used in the existing Course Administration report (Leading reporting area). 

 

As with all visualizations, you can maximize them to take up all available space, and export to CSV, using the contextual menu that appears in the top-right corner when you hover over the visualization. 

Continuous feedback

We'd like to hear your feedback on these reports or any other reports.

You can submit, comment upon, and vote for new features in the Feature Requests tab of “What’s New”.


Blackboard Data Reporting April 2022 Release

The April 2022 release of Blackboard Data Reporting includes one new report and improvements to an existing report. 

A new Grade Boundary report has been added in Learning > Student Performance and Grades that shows the proportion of enrollments below or above a given grade percentage. This report follows our standard report design and so includes advanced filtering, Institutional Hierarchy node comparison, and course-level detail. 

The Course Access tab, in Learning > Student Engagement, has been updated with the following enhancements: 

  • Improved, multi-stage Institutional Hierarchy filtering. 

  • Filters to include or exclude enrollments that are not “available” in courses or with no activity after a given number of days. 

  • “Active students” are now defined as having at least 1 course access and at least 5 minutes of activity. 

  • An additional donut chart is included that differentiates active students between “recently active” (active in the last week) and “previously active” (active, but not in the last week)  

  • A new chart is included that shows the distribution of students based on how recently they have accessed their courses. 

  • A new chart compares the activity of students in courses associated with different Institutional Hierarchy nodes. 

  • A new table lists courses and summarizes the engagement of enrolled students 

We would like to hear your feedback on this report, or any other reports, via this feedback form. Note that targeted feedback is requested via the “What’s New” pane, and you can submit, comment upon, and vote for new features in the Feature Requests tab of “What’s New”. 


Blackboard Data March 2022 Release

Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 15 March 2022
Blackboard Data, Reporting, Developer, Updated Features, New Features

  • The Blackboard Data user interface found at data.blackboard.com has been updated to provide a better experience for first-time users, including introductory information about Blackboard Data and an explanation of the new reports now available. 
  • A new Blackboard Data Developer area contains the existing Settings page for management of the Service account, as well as a convenient link to your Snowflake instance. 

New Blackboard Data Reporting March 2022 Release

Continuous Delivery | Release to Production 15 March 2022
Reporting, Updated Features, New Features

We’re pleased to announce the release of Blackboard Data Reporting, a new suite of reports to help institutional leaders to make data-informed decisions about policy and practice within the EdTech platform. 

This solution includes three reporting areas: 

  • Learning: relating to learner activity, engagement, and performance. 

  • Teaching: relating to instructional practice and course design.

  • Leading: relating to institutional success and tool adoption. Includes improved versions of the adoption reports previously in Blackboard Reporting. 

These reports comprise 21 dashboards and more than 100 visualizations and insights, and our question-focused user experience makes it easy to understand the purpose of each insight. 

Blackboard Data Reporting is included as a standard for Learn SaaS clients in eligible locations.

As this is an early release of this solution, there are some known issues relating to the accessibility of the reporting content, for which we’re working closely with AWS QuickSight,the business intelligence tool we use to develop these reports, to resolve as a matter of urgency. The reports are currently only available in US English, but we’re working on localization and expect to have the reports localized in 14 languages within Q2. 

We'd like your help in improving these reports and generating new ideas, and to support this we'll prompt users with targeted questions in the What’s New panel in the reports, where you will also find a new Feature Requests panel to enable submission and voting on new ideas. 

In order to support broader usage of these reports across your institution, we’re increasing the number of individual accounts you can request from 5 to 20, and we would encourage you to use these for institutional leaders such as: 

  • Provosts 

  • Deans 

  • Heads of eLearning/Curriculum Development 

  • Heads of Distance and Online Learning 

  • Student Success leadership 

Learn more about the Blackboard Data Reporting 


 


 

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The What’s new panel is currently only available in English. This panel will be available in more languages throughout 2022 and 2023.